A modest review. I'm surprised. Most review sites have been tearing this game to pieces and I believe it is because they want too badly for Thief [4] to be Dishonored.

While both ARE stealth games, they are not in anyway the same game. Dishonored at its core is meant to be combative (the goal is to kill people for Christ's sake) and as such has combat mechanics and the AI to back that up. Thief [4] is meant to be the furthest thing from combative and as such has poor combat mechanics and AI in comparison to Dishonored.

The whole point to Thief is getting through a mission without the AI even having the slightest clue you were there. If they had made the game more similar to Dishonored in combat mechanics and AI then a good majority of people would "run and gun" their way through the entire game. They wanted to punish people who play the "run and gun" strategy by giving them a stupidly difficult frustrating game if they play as such.

Could they have gone about punishing those who don't play stealthily in a different way? Yes, they could. Metal Gear is a perfect example of a stealth game that caters to both the slow paced "stealth crawler" and the fast paced "run and gunner" -- if you run and gun you'll naturally have more reinforcements to contend with, so you are enticed to reduce how much you are seen.

Does this all mean that Thief is a broken experience and a bad game? No, Thief is still very much enjoyable, just that it is meant to be an experience that is to be enjoyed at a very slow pace. If you don't have the patience for this type of play style Dishonored (and the rumored Dishonored 2) is probably the game for you instead.